Quality of Intl Schools in Capital Area are deteriorating

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stadinslangi
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Quality of Intl Schools in Capital Area are deteriorating

Post by stadinslangi » Sun Jan 31, 2016 12:07 pm

I just visited few international school in capital area. I have to say the quality deteriorating rate is really shocking.
- the basic infrastructure is way lacking behind some of the new schools in same area. The GYM looks like from 50s, only with very old and basic equipment. Floors and walls are outmoded, never to mention anything about inspiring design.
- every class has more than 20 students with one teacher and one TA maximium. This is seriously overload than many other standard international schools that I visited in China, LA and middle east.
- teaching staff is not very well trained and professional skills and competence are not updated. I talked with some parents, they are disappointed with some teachers who are lack of native English skills and not chartered with IB qualification. Also, some teachers who are well accepted by parents had moved away during last a couple of years.
- students lack of diversity. (Well, we can not over blame on this perspective since school accept whoever come to enroll their names. )
So in general, I am a bit shocked by such discovering and feeling something is really wrong here now. I am not comparing international schools in Helsinki with elite schools in other countries, but at the moment, they seemed much behind ordinary Finnish schools, which is really challenging for return expat to choose. Most of the expat will be up to new expat mission again and do not want children to lost the few years in Finland.



Quality of Intl Schools in Capital Area are deteriorating

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wolf80
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Re: Quality of Intl Schools in Capital Area are deterioratin

Post by wolf80 » Sun Jan 31, 2016 5:11 pm

That is a dangerous generalization and over-simplification, especially without giving your own background and qualification in the field. You have to give a bit more objective data than just your personal impressions.

Apart from that I know many expats who are perfectly satisfied with their choice of (international) school, and never heard any of your predicted "I won't have children in Finland because the schools are so bad"-nonsense.

Rosamunda
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Re: Quality of Intl Schools in Capital Area are deterioratin

Post by Rosamunda » Sun Jan 31, 2016 6:21 pm

There is only one really "international" school in Finland and that is ISH in Ruoholahti. Is that the school you are referring to?

The other World IB schools (Ressu, SYK, Mattliden, Etela Tapiola etc) fall under the state-controlled education sector and fully meet the requirements of all Finnish state schools as well as the criteria set by the World Schools organisation.

If you are a returning Finn, then you do have the option of putting your children into a mainstream Finnish school if the colour of the wallpaper in the classrooms doesn't suit you! I'm not aesthetics have a huge impact on the quality of teaching/learning. Maybe the schools prefer to spend their money on other things such as IT equipment etc.

There is absolutely no reason why a non-native English teacher should not teach in an English-medium-instruction school. Most of the teachers and lecturers in the universities here are also non-native English speakers teaching in English. Just because someone is a native English speaker does not make them a better teacher. Anyway, how did you come to that conclusion? Anecdotal evidence from parents?

If you want to check the schools, take a look at their results. The IB schools usually perform very well in the ranking published by Hesari.

leisl
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Re: Quality of Intl Schools in Capital Area are deterioratin

Post by leisl » Sun Jan 31, 2016 6:33 pm

Best maths teacher I had was not a Finn. Best language teacher I had was not a native speaker of that language. My own high school in Helsinki was overcrowded and sadly lacking in resources. But it produced results that other schools envied. And highly-educated Finns seem to know English grammar better than native English speakers.

Tbf perhaps the OP is thinking of "for-profit" schools where parents are deluded into thinking that shiny equals good teaching. I would take Finnish education any day of the week. It produces children who can think for themselves. Not children who can sit for tests and behave like robots.

If you put your children into a Finnish language school, and they are native English speakers, they would still qualify for English instruction two hours per week. I can't say much for the quality. But it is their right.

leisl
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Re: Quality of Intl Schools in Capital Area are deterioratin

Post by leisl » Mon Feb 01, 2016 12:11 am

Cory wrote:
leisl wrote:And highly-educated Finns seem to know English grammar better than native English speakers.
Yup, they can spit out perfect written structure but colloquial grammar is lacking. In the business world, efficiency of one's English is not dependent on the perfection of their written grammar. :)
You are right. But for teaching grammar, it's helpful to know it!

Rosamunda
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Re: Quality of Intl Schools in Capital Area are deterioratin

Post by Rosamunda » Mon Feb 01, 2016 5:21 pm

Cory wrote:
leisl wrote:And highly-educated Finns seem to know English grammar better than native English speakers.
Yup, they can spit out perfect written structure but colloquial grammar is lacking.
Interesting observation. I would have said the opposite. Kids leaving school nowadays are fairly confident speakers with a wide range of colloquial, idiomatic language but seem to have serious shortcomings in being able to structure written texts.

I have encountered vast, huge amounts of text written (and/or translated into English) by Finns and the syntax and structures are rarely perfect. It is very very difficult for a Finnish person to achieve C2 level in written English though many seem able to communicate at that level verbally. Internationally, perfect English is a bit of an overkill. English lingua franca has a grammar of its own which some native speakers would label as "bad" but, to be honest, who cares? If Finns can communicate efficiently with Russians in "bad" English that's OK too!

Rosamunda
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Re: Quality of Intl Schools in Capital Area are deterioratin

Post by Rosamunda » Tue Feb 02, 2016 7:55 pm

Indeed. As do many native speakers in that age group.

Rosamunda
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Re: Quality of Intl Schools in Capital Area are deterioratin

Post by Rosamunda » Tue Feb 02, 2016 11:03 pm

(Cory)The point I had attempted to make was that grammar comes in many forms and understanding textbook grammar does not compare to using spoken grammar which native speakers use in one form or another.
Fair enough. But there are thousands of EFL textbooks out there and they are all different. I'm not really sure what you mean by "textbook" grammar since there are so many varieties of English spoken all over the world and no authority which dictates the rules. My mum was taught never to split infinitives or end a sentence with a preposition, but no one teaches that anymore. As for spoken grammar... it is what it is - whether spoken as a lingua franca or by native speakers. Many researchers in English philology would argue that English grammar as spoken by non-native speakers will become the standard. In other words, there is a lingua franca grammar emerging that simplifies what you call textbook grammar and makes the language comprehensible to a greater number of people worldwide. So it's the non-native speakers who create "spoken grammar" rather than the native speakers.

But I agree that many students who have not updated their English since learning it in school in the 1950s, 60s or 70s speak as they were taught to write it. But there is nothing wrong with that, as long as it is comprehensible to the people they are communicating with. My point was that many older native speakers also speak English with a grammar that belongs to another era. It reminds me of my mother saying that she could understand every word of French spoken by De Gaulle but couldn't understand a word my kids said!

Interesting topic... but I guess we hijacked the OP. Our bad.

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Pursuivant
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Re: Quality of Intl Schools in Capital Area are deterioratin

Post by Pursuivant » Wed Feb 03, 2016 12:35 am

Rosamunda, you forgot the german school and le french school and the english school and the russian school...

Those are the "old" (german, russian,english) that were the elites in the day. Your sprog could get in if daddy was a diplomat...
"By the pricking of my thumbs,
Something wicked this way comes."

Rosamunda
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Re: Quality of Intl Schools in Capital Area are deterioratin

Post by Rosamunda » Wed Feb 03, 2016 9:06 am

Pursuivant wrote:Rosamunda, you forgot the german school and le french school and the english school and the russian school...

Those are the "old" (german, russian,english) that were the elites in the day. Your sprog could get in if daddy was a diplomat...
The "French" school (Jules Verne) is only a primary school, the kids go to the European School for their "collège" and "lycée". Most of the teachers there are French native speakers. I have no idea what the fees are but I assume the school gets some funding from the French State and also some from Finland - at least for the children who have permanent Finnish residency. The other Finnish-French school is just a regular Finnish school that offers a bilingual immersion programme. The English school is also a Finnish state school with a bilingual programme and I think the German school is the same. I would imagine the vast majority of teachers are Finnish.

As for getting in, I think they do a language test. When we applied to the English school and the Finnish-French school back in 2001, we were told that Finnish was a requirement. Our kids didn't speak any Finnish so we couldn't get them in. Not sure where all the diplomats put their kids these days but I assume they are scattered around various schools: ISH, ESH, German, Russian School and all the IB schools and immersion schools (eg Kulosaari etc). Not all the embassies can afford the fees charged by ISH.

stadinslangi
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Re: Quality of Intl Schools in Capital Area are deterioratin

Post by stadinslangi » Sun Feb 07, 2016 7:15 pm

Rosamunda wrote:There is only one really "international" school in Finland and that is ISH in Ruoholahti. Is that the school you are referring to?


If you want to check the schools, take a look at their results. The IB schools usually perform very well in the ranking published by Hesari.
Could you provide the link for the result of IB schools in Helsinki area? I am interested to see.

The feedback I got is from small sum of parents who have children in international schools from Espoo and Helsinki area. it is a bit far away from anecdotal and entertaining. However, one thing is clear that IB school students are only small percentage of total students numbers in same grade. So in some of the education activities, they have small presents. Some time, due to the small number, they could not get same lot of chances to perform (cross group projects, some competitions or educational events).

AnaTeresa
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Re: Quality of Intl Schools in Capital Area are deterioratin

Post by AnaTeresa » Fri Feb 12, 2016 12:39 am

I cannot comment on the other schools but the International School in Vantaa is superb.... Good facilities, great teachers, I don't have any complain

stadinslangi
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Re: Quality of Intl Schools in Capital Area are deterioratin

Post by stadinslangi » Wed May 18, 2016 7:42 am

I am trying to keep this conversation alive.

any comment about any Bilingual schools? Is the situation there better? Will students in bilingual school have better chances to join joint projects between schools?


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